Rogier Bikker - Articles

Take a look myself

The media is already stating for years that China is the place to be for business. Numbers that are far ahead of the west about any growth rate in any sector are constantly presented. And although I was always enthusiastic about China, I still had some doubts about the real growth. What is really happening there? The only way to find the answer was to go and take a look myself.

Together with a group of 42 Dutch entrepreneurs in the new media sector I visited Shanghai and Chengdu in one long and exiting week.

Shanghai

We started out with visiting international companies lead by non-Chinese CEO’s. First 2 international advertising agencies; BBDO and JWT. The CEO’s, English and Dutch respectively, gave us a good impression on the pitfalls and challenges in China and the differences with the West. At the end of the day we where welcomed at the lightning electronics department of Philips by the Dutch CEO of Philips Asia.

On day 2 I visited Tudou, often called the Chinese Youtube. But Tudou existed before Youtube and is bigger in terms of time spent on the website (45min. VS 7min.). So we can better start calling Youtube the American Tudou. This was one of the companies that I was most looking forward to. The presentation was very interesting and I will definitely write more about Tudou on this blog soon.

On our last day in Shanghai we where welcomed as highly respected guests by the Shanghai Media Group, the biggest multimedia television, radio broadcasting and news company in China, only to found out that TV technology in China is far ahead of The Netherlands. For example; making reservations with doctors via your TV, playing games with other people that are watching TV, switching camera’s yourself during sports events and stunning home-shopping revenues.

Hotel room view over Shanghai

Chengdu

We continued our trip in Chengdu where we got a very amusing presentation about the Chengdu High Tech Zone. The government in Chengdu is doing everything they can to attract foreign companies. Because of this Chengdu is expanding amazingly fast. Anyone looking for a good place to start doing business in China should head to Chengdu. Government and investors will be waiting.

We concluded the first day in Chengdu with a very interesting tour through the Sichuan University campus by one of the students. Sichuan University has 70.000 students, most of them living on the campus. With this stunning amount of students, you can imagine that the campus feels much like a town within Chengdu. We also had the chance to take a look in some dormitories: very small rooms for 6 people and a shower-head above the toilet-hole. Simply shocking.

Thursday evening we organized a network dinner. There I met the people behind Yaawa, the Chinese Netvibes. I found it very interesting to see how the Chinese internet-landscape creates the opportunity to use benchmarks from west, use the lessons learned, and create a better copy to capture the Chinese market.

On our last day we visited some touristic sights and we had a cup of tea with the head of Taoism, which was a great honor. Luckily not such a busy day, because the rest of the week had been amazingly heavy. Because we also wanted to experience the Chinese nightlife in fancy bars and clubs. Often resulting in no more then 4-5 hours of sleep.

Guys with glasses; me, Luuk, Hans and Jeroen.

Great experience

Shanghai was impressing because of it’s size, Chengdu was shocking because of it’s growing pace, the Chinese companies where interesting, the trip was heavy, the hotels stunning and the people who travelled along inspiring: no way I would have wanted to miss this.

For sure I will be doing something in, with or for China in the future and I can recommend anyone to do the same, since it’s (really) the place to be.